Watch Me Rant About History

This is pretty much just a page for me to rant about my historical hyperfixations. So, go ahead and enjoy that.

Molasses Flood

By now you probably expect that I'm the type of person who can find humor in a tragedy. Well, that's definitely the case here. Something about the idea of someone screaming "It's too late for me" while one of the slowest liquids I know of oozes towards them with all the urgency of an overtired sloth. As hilarious as I find the mental image I'm sure I've failed to communicate that's not actually how it went. I fell down the deepest of internet holes on this a few years ago and it has stuck in my brain since. The Massachussetts Molasses Flood happened in 1919 on January 15th. Despite my blase attitude this actually was a bit of a tragedy. Honestly, after I giggle for a second or two I think about this and get angry about the corruption of corporations. One of the saddest things to me is that people who lived near the 50 foot tall tank that imploded knew that it leaked. They knew it and they told people and the company that owned it (I'm looking at you Purity Distilling) did nothing but cover it up. They painted it brown to try to hide the leakage. Even if they weren't corrupt as all hell, I for one wouldn't have been able to forgive their stupidity. This tank wasn't structurally sound at all. The metal was weak and thin, the chemical composition was awful, and all it took was the shock of a slightly warmer than usual day to warp the metal enough to flood the streets. Yeah, the 35 mph wave that terrorized the city was a small price to pay so Jim at Purity Distilling could take a mental health day and phone it in at his job. Aside from the horrific destruction this wrought, it also injured 150 people and killed 21. With all that said, imagine opening up about your PTSD and someone asking what caused it. "Oh, you know, a flood of molasses."

The Vietnam War to Nicki Minaj Pipeline

I'm sure by now you're all considering whether internet censorship might really be a good thing if it could get me to shut up about my dumb facts. Unfortunately for you it's gonna take a lot more than my insignificant drop in the bucket of the vast ocean that is the internet for the government to spit all over our consitutional rights (I'm like 99.7% sure). Now today I'd like to talk to you about something near and dear to my heart (total lie), the emergence of hip hop. In actuality I took a class a while ago that talked a little about this and while I walked out of that experience with little to nothing to show for it, I still thought this was at least interesting so here goes nothing. If we're gonna talk about how every hip hop artist, Nicki Minaj included, really got their start due to the Vietnam War, we should probably begin at the exact end of all of that. Societal context is everything, but if you're too stupid/oblivious to understand the racial tensions that led to a lot of this occurring then you should probably just close this tab anyway so just apply all your understanding of what it may have been like to be a black man in the time of the Vietnam War here. Anyways, war pretty much sucks. It sucks so bad that by 1970 about 1/5 of the US troops were actively addicted to heroin, who knew? More to the point, in Vietnam heroin was strong and extremely easy to get and every black man that was fighting over there would be coming home to a country that wanted nothing less than to see them succeed. This was such an extreme situation that the president at the time, Nixon, promoted an idea called "black capitalism," suggesting that African Americans should sink or swim on their own without government aid. African Americans made up a disproportionately large percentage of the nation's impoverished and the "just get off your ass and work" advice was shockingly not that helpful and strangely reminescent of Kim K. Not to mention she's not the only one of our time to say something so problematic, Donald Trump spoke out on his own support of "black capitalism" in 2017. But back to the main plot...African Americans had the heroin supply, the firsthand insight into its marketability, and the crushing knowledge that no one in this country was going to help them. So what else was there to do but sell heroin? Unfortunately, drugs are pretty bad for you and the presence of heroin in African American communities not only gave ammunition to a ton of racists who wanted to look down on them, but heroin is also a depressant. What better way to dance the pain away than with music? So, after numerous subtle musical evolutions hip hop was born! Hip hop music became about controlling your own narritive and showcasing the self you want to be and drugs went hand in hand with this cool, untouchable persona. You can still here countless references to drugs in hip hop songs today and it probably never would have happened without one of the more nuanced butterfly effects I've ever heard of. On that note, good morning Vietnam and you're welcome Nicki Minaj!!!